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We also find it practised by the rough miners of Cornwall and the wild mountaineers of Montenegro. An army doctor who travelled in Montenegro a few years ago said that it was no rare thing to meet men who had been subjected to trepanation seven, eight, or even nine times.
It was practised by the men of the cave of L'HOMME MORT at the beginning of the Neolithic period, and was still in use at Moret when metals began to be known. The discoveries of Dr. Wankel, the excavations of the tumulus of Guisseny, prove that trepanation was continued throughout the Bronze age, whilst the Jeuilly and Limet tombs show that it was not discontinued even in Merovingian times.
Time alone can solve this question, which is one of those secrets of the future as difficult to fathom as those of the past. Industry, Commerce, and Social Organization; Fights, Wounds and Trepanation.
Examples are known of the trepanation of every part of the skull, even of the forehead, which at one time was supposed to have escaped. We have ourselves given instances of frontal trepanation, and Dr. Prunieres mentions eleven cases in which the forehead had been operated on.
To conclude, we must repeat that trepanation is not really a dangerous operation, and the reason it is nearly always followed by the death of the subject in our own time is because it is never attempted except in desperate cases, and the fatal result is really caused by the cerebral disease, on account of which the operation was performed.
We meet with numerous examples of trepanation in America, and fresh discoveries are daily made by the energetic men of science in that country. Dr. Mantegazza mentions three examples of trepanation from Peru, which are of very great interest. The latter seem to have taken place at different times, and death seems to have succeeded the last operation.
In the light of what we now know about the necessity for absolute cleanliness, asepsis as we have come to call it, it is rather startling to note the directions that are given to a surgeon to be observed on the day when he is to do a trepanation.
The operation was done for epilepsy, infantile convulsions, headache, and various cerebral diseases believed to be caused by confined demons, to whom the hole gave a ready method of escape. Lucas-Championniere: Trepanation neolithique, Paris, 1912. The practice is still extant.
In addition to the foregoing list which is by no means complete there are several combinations of operations, as, for example, the Fergus trephining operation, which is really a combination of a sclero-corneal trepanation and a cyclodialysis.
The inflammation of the bone noticed along the edges of the trepanation proves that a notched implement was used to saw out the piece of skull. However the operation may have been performed, it is not one of great danger to the patient or of great difficulty to the operator.
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